Goodbye Professor McGonagall
by C a Girl
Summary: I didn't realize how much I liked Minerva until I had to kill her for a writing contest. Here is the result.


It felt so very cold on the bright afternoon and Minerva couldn't shake the chill that had crept over her. It had been there since that night on the front lawn when the fifth years had been taking their OWL exam on the astronomy tower.

It started at St. Mungo's where she rested for a few days. She hated it, the entire time she spent there. One couldn't sit back on their haunches when there was work to be done. That had been her philosophy in the early days when she was a student at Hogwarts.

She shook her right hand. It was cramping again, feeling numb and sleepy. She flexed the fingers, the feeling refusing to return to her digits. She gripped her wand lightly and swished it for a moment, some of the warmth she had lost coming back.

The students waited expectantly for her to show them their assignment for the day. The sixth years that had decided to continue in transfiguration were getting very well advanced. They were starting to tackle the difficult tasks that only very skilled and practiced wizards could accomplish.

She wanted to start off small, since they had just come back from summer vacation. She needed to jog their memories and so she set them several little tasks. A letter opener, an ink bottle, a piece of parchment, she wanted them to transfigure them into another object that could be used for letter writing, a wax stamp with emblem, a quill, a bag of sand to dry the ink so it wouldn't smudge.

She was going about her demo when her right arm was stricken, a sharp pain riding up and down in lightning bolt waves that made her sick to her stomach. It was then that her chest began to seize.

It felt like something was pushing in on the sides of her chest cavity. The pain was sharp as if someone had stabbed her through with one of the letter openers they were attempting to transfigure into quills. Her head was swimming and the ground was rushing up to meet her as she slid off her chair.

A student rushed over and felt her pulse. "Help! Someone get help." The student called. It was Hermione Granger's voice, Minerva recognized it but she couldn't understand why she hadn't recognized it sooner. Her vision was growing watery on the edges. She shook her head, trying to clear her view. It was crowded with the concerned faces of children that she knew and taught.

The stunning spells those ministry brutes used on her had taken hold and weakened her heart, far more than she had suspected. It started to take hold in little ways. She couldn't lift her bag of teaching books over her shoulder anymore and had to have a student carry her things from her office to the classroom. She would find herself getting winded on the stairs sometimes and get frustrated when she had to stop on a landing to catch her breath.

It was nothing she couldn't live with, but she hated admitting how very old she had gotten. Even witches with their expanded life span were prone to the effects of aging. Hadn't Dumbledore told her that once? He said how very old he felt just last year, after the Tri-wizard tournament nightmare.

She felt someone squeezing her hand through the haze of memories. It was Albus, his silver beard hanging long as he walked her along on a stretcher. She tried to speak, but he hushed her.

"Save your strength Minerva." He said gently.

_What strength_, asked a voice at the back of her head. She closed her eyes on that thought. _What strength_? There was none left in her body, not enough strength to survive the palpitating of her weakened heart. She could see only the dim red that makes up the back of one's eyelids but soon images were crossing her vision, images she had almost forgotten.

Her first wand was sitting in a pretty package on the kitchen table of her old house. Her dad had bought it for when she had magically repaired a cookie jar she had broken in a childish fit. The wand was much too big for a child her size, but it was such a sweet gesture.

She saw her acceptance letter to Hogwarts, packed in the bottom of her trunks for school, ready to begin her magical education.

She saw herself as if she were not in her body, wearing a simple black dress and standing in a cemetery filled with family and friends, paying her final respects to the father who had never failed in supporting his daughter's pursuits. She felt her mother hugging her close and sobbing into her hair that it would be ok.

She saw Tom Riddle with his prefect's badge gleaming on his cloak smiling in a simpering fashion as Hagrid was escorted to Azkaban for the crime he did not commit. She remembered vaguely that until then Tom had appeared charming and sweet and that once, only once she had let him kiss her under the shadows thrown at the edge of the Forbidden Forest.

Her mother was laid to rest a few years later in a quiet burial ceremony with a few less friends and family. The hard times were upon them and the Dark Lord had risen. She remembered with a kind of terror how he had tortured and killed so many of her friends and colleagues. She couldn't quite compute how a boy who had been so sweet to her and so willing to kiss her could later turn into the most feared and evil wizard ever born.

Then she recalled sitting on the stone fence on Privet Drive for hours waiting for Dumbledore and Harry Potter. She wanted so badly to understand why such terror had ended so suddenly and so surprisingly because of a baby with a lightning bolt scar to remind him of that sudden fall from power.

Her breathing slowed and she saw years pass, bringing her to where she was now, lying in the infirmary and waiting for her final breath to be stolen. She was not afraid, only mildly annoyed that she would not be allowed to finish teaching her students.

It was then that she tried to tell Dumbledore what an impact he had had on her life. She couldn't put it into words how he had always been there for her, how even when she was a student he had taken the time to ensure that her skills would be put to good work as a teacher, asking her to tutor other students. "Lemon drop." She whispered, remembering his favorite candy.

Whether or not Dumbledore understood what she was trying to tell him he took her last words as a gift for his ears only. Minerva had been his greatest and most respected of colleagues and she would be dearly missed. He patted her hand as the final breath exited her lungs and her body fell limp, at rest at last.

"Goodbye Professor McGonagall." He said quietly as the tears slipped down his face and into his long beard. He turned to Madame Pomfrey and with a simple nod of his head she understood. She bowed her head in respect and she too found that her eyes were wet at the passing of so great a teacher, so great a person.

The End


End file.
